Coring is an integral part of hydrocarbon exploration and recovery activities because it provides material from specific subterranean regions for analysis. This in turn helps the ultimate goal of hydrocarbon (or other target fluid) recovery.
Coring devices are known to the art and include a core bit, a core barrel and in many cases a barrel liner. Barrel liners help keep the core in a more pristine condition, which assists in the overall information gainable therefrom. On the negative side however once the core barrel is removed from the well to retrieve the core sample, the liners are cut either into segments of predetermined length or open (often by circular saws) along their lengths to expose the core. The act of cutting the liner open is often detrimental to core integrity and additional tends to contaminate the core with metal cuttings and cause thermal damage as well.
Since contamination reduces analytical accuracy, rendering suspect the reliability of information obtained by the analysis, present methods of coring are less than ideal.